41-Year-Old Jailed For Grooming 13-Year-Old Girls

A Belfast man has been jailed for six years for charges relating to grooming three 13-year-old girls.

41-year-old David Osborne, of Summer Street, was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register for the rest of his life.

Belfast Crown Court heard that Osborne sent the girls gifts, Valentine's cards and money.

He also sent lewd text messages and one of them an indecent image of himself. He was sent pictures of the girls.

Osborne pleaded guilty to one count of meeting a child following sexual grooming, two of attempting to meet a child after grooming and three charges relating to indecent photographs of children, all committed on dates between 17 January 2008 and 4 February 2009.

Judge Corinne Philpott QC said if the teenager he met at a hotel in England had not walked out on seeing that he was not the young man of 19 or 20 that he claimed to be, "one doesn't actually know what precisely he would have done on the day in question".

The judge told the court that although Osborne has been assessed as being a dangerous offender who posed a risk to children, because the offences came under the old sentencing regime, her hands were tied as regards putting an extended or indeterminate sentence in place.

(H)